homefront news

Pearl Harbor hero to be reburied in Arlington

ARLINGTON, Va. — Seventy-six years after his valiant service during the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Seaman 1st Class James Richard Ward of Ohio will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The ceremony was scheduled for Dec. 21and will remember Ward, who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. According to a story at www.bigislandnow.com, the 20-year-old Ward originally was interred as an Unknown at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii until his remains were identified in 2021 using new technology. His remains were among the last that could be individually identified, according to the bigislandnow.com story. A rosette now adorns his name in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, signifying that he has been accounted for.

The reburial service at Arlington follows the Navy’s successful USS Oklahoma Project, which has led to the identification of 361 other service members from the USS Oklahoma, including sailors and Marines.

When the USS Oklahoma was struck by a Japanese torpedo at Pearl Harbor, it began to list. A minute later, two more torpedoes slammed into the 583-foot, 27,000-ton battleship, followed by at least two more.

Hundreds of sailors dove overboard or climbed up the hull during the 12 minutes it took for the battleship to roll onto its side in the shallow water. Hundreds more inside the hull were plunged into darkness as their ship keeled over and filled with water. The order was given to abandon ship.

Ward was a gun crew member in Turret No. 1, a 14-inch gun turret. He remained at his post, using a flashlight to show the way for his shipmates to escape the sinking ship. Ward became one of 429 men who died aboard the Oklahoma that day. A total of 16, ranging in rank from seaman to rear admiral, were awarded Medals of Honor for heroism that day, 11 posthumously. Ward’s medal was presented in March 1942 and mailed to his parents in Springfield, along with a letter from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox.

New film about Hannibal in works

Denzel Washington will reportedly star in a new film about the life of Hannibal Barca, the Carthaginian general who battled the Roman Empire in its early years. Washington will again team up with director Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “The Equalizer 3”) for the Netflix film. Screenwriter John Logan, who worked on “Gladiator,” will also be part of the project.

St. Petersburg museum launches new exhibits

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The St. Petersburg Museum of History recently unveiled two new military exhibits. “American Soldier: Conflicts, Shipwrecks, and The Homefront” combines several sub-exhibits on American military history, while “A Private Collection” features 26 original paintings by South Florida’s original Highwaymen.

“American Soldier” includes six cases filled with various military weaponry and artifacts, dating back to the American

Civil War. On loan from Tallahassee’s Museum of Florida History are numerous artifacts from the Maple Leaf, a Civil War Union naval ship sunk by Rebel forces as it sailed the St. John’s River near Jacksonville in 1864. There’s also an example of the “torpedo” that sank it.

New military museum planned in Minnesota

LITTLE FALLS, Minn. — Officials broke ground recently on a planned military museum at Camp Ripley in Minnesota.

The facility will be built on a 30-acre patch of land off Highway 371 in Little Falls. Construction is set to begin next spring and the $32 million facility is expected to open in early 2026.

Thief swipes guns from Arkansas museum

JACKSONVILLE, Ark. — Police in Arkansas are looking for a suspect involved in a museum theft that included two submachine guns valued at about $11,000. According to police, the suspect walked towards the back of the museum, snuck into the archives, and stole the two machine guns — a Carl Gustaf m/45 submachine gun worth about $10,000 and a Sten Submachine gun worth about $1,000.

The man had been visiting the museum a few times for the past two and a half years, and the director believed that he had stolen firearms from the museum in the past. Anyone with information regarding the incident is asked to contact Detective Doughty at 501-533-6479.